Keywords (Original Language):

Service providers or third-party logistics providers can be defined as outside firms
which carry out some certain parts or the whole of the logistics activities of a business.
Businesses choose to work with the 3PL firms for various reasons such as gaining competitive
advantage in the global world, focusing on the major activities, reducing the costs and so on. However, the selection of the service provider is a complicated decision-making process
which involves many factors.
This study focuses on a model used for the selection of 3PL company, developed by
combining the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), which is a multiple criteria decision
making (MCDM) technique, and the TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity
to Ideal Solution) model. The citeria and the hierarchical structure of the model have been
determined in the light of the views of the experts and scientific communities by examining
numerous articles on evaluation and ranking of 3PL selection published in the international
journals.
The hierarchical structure consists of 20 criteria, 4 major ones, each of which is made
up of four sub-criteria, and four options. Pairwise comparison matrix data has been
determined by an expert team consisting of four people. Criteria weights have been assessed
by AHP and the TOPSIS has been used in the selection of the most appropriate 3PL company.